Sunday, January 01, 2006
Time Stands Still
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While reading Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate,* I was struck by the moral benefit René Descartes saw in his mind/body dualism:
But Kristol’s only reasonable defense is to claim that, in the circles he runs in, the divine right of kings (or oligarchs, at least) still goes unchallenged and the idea of liberal democracy remains unknown.
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* Viking Penguin, 2002
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In a new year it is as appropriate to look back as forward.
While reading Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate,* I was struck by the moral benefit René Descartes saw in his mind/body dualism:
[A]fter the error of those who deny the existence of God . . . there is none that is more powerful in leading feeble minds astray from the straight path of virtue than the supposition that the soul of the brutes is of the same nature with our own; and consequently that after this life we have nothing to hope for or fear, more than flies and ants . . .This is an argument still in use, now against the theory of evolution, instead of materialism:
Evolution lowers man from the ‘image of God’ to the level of an animal. Why then should he not behave as one, in his own life and towards others?
Worse, Descartes’ concern about the "feeble minded" ("feeble spirited" in some translations) sounds very like this:
There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work.
The latter comes from neocon guru Irving Kristol. Now, Descartes wrote in an age when the "divine right of kings" went largely unchallenged and the very idea of liberal democracy was unknown, so we can hardly blame him for violating the sensibilities that have developed since his time.
But Kristol’s only reasonable defense is to claim that, in the circles he runs in, the divine right of kings (or oligarchs, at least) still goes unchallenged and the idea of liberal democracy remains unknown.
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* Viking Penguin, 2002
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